>As an ex-smoker, I never felt any anger towards cigarette companies. Only anger I felt was towards government regulations like banning smoking indoors or high taxes on cigarettes. Also felt a bit annoyed with society judging the smokers. Even when I was trying to quit, I didn't blame cigarette companies.

If the majority of this cultural change happened during the age of the internet and the leaked info from manufactures around tweaking recipes to be more addictive, falsifying research, etc was being dropped on Twitter, Reddit, etc on a weekly basis, I imagine that would have played out differently

Better or worse? The cigarette companies would've loved the era of "fake news".

I cannot imagine tiktok doing anything good for me given how much instagram videos bore the hell out of me. What is it exactly that gives you a „kick“?

For me, Tiktok somehow shows videos that are just “right”. Maybe it is length of videos and ux. I skip anything boring in first 2-3 seconds and probably that’s how other people use it too. So creators have to make their videos entertaining from the first second.

And also videos somehow are relevant to current situation in my life. For example, if I have a tight deadline at work, Tiktok will show me videos related to work, productivity, mocking deadlines, etc. Not sure if it is just the numbers game since you can go through 10s of videos in a few minutes. And you just remember videos that were right or if their algorithm is really that good.

Perhaps the real culprits are the digital "gas stations" that make money hand-over-fist with TikTok's engagement loop. Apple, Google, and to an extent, Microsoft are all complicit in letting people make addictive experiences that promote their respective platforms. Much like the gas station, the smartphone is ubiquitous. Everyone passes by the TikTok aisle on their way to texting their mom or Googling a pie recipe, rich or poor. Worse yet, the guilt they feel for their addiction causes people to hide it. Nobody wants to address it, they just want to scroll their For You Page, enveloped in the comfort of homogeneous content. I normally don't glean empathy from people who make bad choices, but social media just makes me sad.

I think, ultimately, the only solution will be stripping platform owners of their power. Google and Apple have both undeniably abused their market position to promote harmful content and shelter the problems that TikTok causes. We'll either die in the shackles of our own corporations, or live long enough to watch them topple over.

I'm not seeing the connection between the Google/Apple duopoly and the rise of TikTok or other addictive social media. I spend half or more of my waking hours on one Apple device or another, and if I had only things Apple has pushed at me to go by, I'd not even know TikTok exists. What's the sequence of events you expect from removing Google and Apple's platform power, that'll lead to reduced social media activity on their platforms and/or in general? Apple, for their part, seem to have spent a fair amount of effort developing features that exist only to curb addiction-like smartphone use—I'm not sure why they'd have done that if they were that focused on getting you to use your phone as much as possible.

Now, if we were talking about whale-chasing F2P games, I'd see your point, but I don't see the connection with social media.

I was just having a chat with my buddy today about how Apple, Microsoft and to a large extent Google are largely the best positioned to profit from any upstream applications. While the likes of Facebook, Instagram and TikTok fight for viewership, these underlying platforms are just counting profits regardless of who reigns supreme on the top. I don't know if Jobs saw this future unfold but here it is.

The gas stations of the digital era are just doing their job, ensuring that there is enough gas supply. What's ironic is that the biggest gas company also created the first automobiles, and basically told the market, everyone is welcome to build an automobile to use my gas as long as you give me 30% of your profits. Oh BTW, your automobile can run only using my gas. Boy, imagine this in the physical world.

If it's any consolation, I'm equally comfortable cussing out Henry Ford as opposed to Steve Jobs.